Today’s college students aren’t digital ‘natives’ – they are digital servants

It isn't digital servitude when all of the things you mention are optional. Notifications in Canvas can be turned off, emails left unread or automatically sent to junk, text messages ignored. VLE's have developed this way in response to students' demand to move away from primitive teaching methods. The old days of unintelligible lecturers scrawling notes on a blackboard are thankfully long gone. There is a place for the none digital teaching methods you advocate of course and finding the balance between both methods is the mark of a good teacher.

I read this with delight as I thought that we were once and for all going to be told that 'Digital Natives' is an inaccurate term and that the idea that people born into an era with ubiquitous computing doesn't necessarily mean that they are instantly digital scholars. However, it was not to be and the idea of Digital Servants is introduced instead. Whatever happened to critical thinking? (or critical digital pedagogy?) Courses using an LMS, too many emails and downloading PDFs doesn't sound like the students are servants but more like there's a whole piece of work to be done with the design of the course and how you communicate with your students. LMS should be supporting not having a life of its own. There are some unintended consequences too from requiring students to be away from their phones for twenty minutes. Some students do not have the privilege of being able to not use their phone when they are relying on it for work or if they have caring responsibilities. There are also many unseen issues that despite the best will in the world you would never find out about such as domestic abuse. It is common for abusers to use mobiles to maintain control over their victims and so it causes more anxiety and stress or worse physical harm. I feel very sad to see that you are not being encouraged to embrace change and use the tech for improving your sessions and that students are not being shown (by example) how to make the most of the resources that they have been given access to at your university. Students who have a learning difference and may not even know it yet may rely on reading via their phones, or if they are lucky enough to have a reading device (kindle, tablet etc) they can annotate online and can share their comments with you or together. There is a lot that can help improve a session but that doesn't mean that you have to have either analogue or digital. Being able to manage the emails made me smile. Students don't have to read all their emails, they get notifications and usually can see the first part of the email on their phone. If it doesn't look important they can not read it and it remains. I see it as making better use of the systems that are in place and recognising that it's not what you use but the way that you use that can make all the difference.

When we validate a 30 credit module we say students will study for 300 hours - this is the work that you have noticed that students are doing. Like reading - and reading out loud was something I remember from school as both intimidating and timewasting. Reading really is better done outside class.